What would you do differently

I was wondering if anyone would do anything different with these photos. I did crop quite a bit in Photoshop. I also did some focusing. What would you do different on these photos? I also brought up the
saturation. I feel like I am overlooking something. I would like to enter these in a local photo contest, so I was hoping for some insight. These were taken with a 5DMark 3 with a Canon 600 mm lens,
love that lens BTW. This is a juvenile Cooper's hawk. The parents come back every year and this time I was able to get a photo. Thanks.

Honestly...I would scrap the second photo. It's not in focus.

The first photo looks over sharpened. There's also a lot of noise in the background possibly due to sharpening the entire image rather than doing selective sharpening. This image has some environment in it so maybe crop less to include more of the Coopers Hawks surroundings.

Check the contest rules to make sure you're not doing anything against the rules.

I really like the first one. Hard to say what I’d do differently without seeing the original. My typical post processing includes exposure adjustment, shadows up, highlights down, a little noise reduction and not much more. The rules of the contest may prohibit you from doing too much processing.

I would have selected a much faster shutter speed.

Some people may take issue to the branch passing behind and through the bird. I think you did a great job with the first one. The second one could be shifted to the left a bit so there’s not so much empty space to the left of the bird.

I had to go out of town unexpectedly or I would have answered sooner, sorry. But thank you Larry and Duane for answering. I'm intrigued by your suggestions.
Duane I wasn't aware that you could only sharpen a portion of your photo, but it makes sense. Do you use Photoshop?

Larry, what shutter speed would you suggest? When you increase your shutter speed, do you increase your ISO as well? I'm afraid if I go too high my photos will be more grainy, so I keep it down.
I think for now I will scrap the second photo. The rules for this contest are very relaxed. They have a wildlife section, color or B&W, and age group or depending how long you have been shooting.
This is my first time entering.
Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. I appreciate it very much.

The background looks like it has a pebbly grain to it, instead of being smoothly out of focus, as it should be. The grain does not look natural - I mean, in real life when you look at something, the out-of-focus stuff in the background doesn't have a grain to it.

I would get rid of that texture or noise grain or whatever it is that is causing it to look that way.

Personally, I think the background is competing for attention with the subject. I would darken the background so the subject stands out even more.

truecolors wrote in post #18703409
I had to go out of town unexpectedly or I would have answered sooner, sorry. But thank you Larry and Duane for answering. I'm intrigued by your suggestions.
Duane I wasn't aware that you could only sharpen a portion of your photo, but it makes sense. Do you use Photoshop?

Larry, what shutter speed would you suggest? When you increase your shutter speed, do you increase your ISO as well? I'm afraid if I go too high my photos will be more grainy, so I keep it down.
I think for now I will scrap the second photo. The rules for this contest are very relaxed. They have a wildlife section, color or B&W, and age group or depending how long you have been shooting.
This is my first time entering.
Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. I appreciate it very much.

Hosted photo: posted by truecolors in
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forum: Birds

Your first image is a very heavy crop of the original frame (thanks for posting the out of camera image) and I think because of how much it's cropped you are introducing a lot of noise. The un-cropped image looks sharp enough to me you're just not close enough for a close up crop (In my opinion). What I'm saying is not a reflection on you and your abilities as a photographer you're just a victim of circumstance in this situation.

If it were my image I would leave more of the environment in the image because of how far the Hawk was from you. I took the liberty to show you how I may crop it if it were mine. As photographers we want to see detail but to someone who may buy a print they will see things differently than we do and aren't focused on the technical things in photography.

To me it looks like whatever you are doing for sharpening, or "focusing" as you state in your initial post, is being far to aggressive and showing up as that pebbly look in the background. That coupled with the lack of detail in the extreme crop will hurt your chances of getting an image with great image.

If you missed focus, or are enlarging a great deal and are trying to use sharpening to compensate for lost detail, you will have to use some form of masking to prevent applying the same attempt at detail recovery you want for the subject being applied to the background. The same masking should fist be used inversed to remove noise in the background.

A very old, but still very useful tutorial on edge mask sharpening and noise reduction;
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=48929

Sheron,

You have a PM...

Randy